Letter: A better way to determine the start of human life

Monday

Ohio’s "heartbeat law" approved earlier in the year — which most Ohioans oppose and a federal judge temporarily blocked in July — would make a lot more sense if the law focused on the right heartbeat.

Clearly, the ability of the fetus to detect the mother’s heartbeat provides a more reasonable standard for determining when human life begins than the standard employed by Ohio’s law, which arbitrarily makes abortion illegal once a fetal heartbeat can be detected and which typically occurs at about six weeks into the pregnancy.

Republican politicians who enacted Ohio’s law and evangelical Christians who back it realize that referring to a heartbeat — any heartbeat — emotionally charges their argument. But it doesn’t make sense that a 6-week-old embryo has begun human life.

An approach based on the point at which the fetus can hear the rhythm of its mother’s heartbeat makes a lot more sense. Human hearing begins to develop at about 18 weeks and the fetus would likely be able to detect its mother’s beating heart after about 24 weeks when the ability to hear rapidly develops. The timeline would align Ohio’s law with Roe v. Wade, which grants the mother her constitutional right of choice until the fetus becomes “viable.”

Clearly, human hearing is just one ability that triggers the presence of human life. But because rhythm is prevalent in nature, an awareness of it becomes salient for determining when human life has begun.

John Reinier Sr., Columbus

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